Don’t fret TV pets: the end of finale month need not be the beginning of a stark summer-programming scene.
That’s right, all of your favourite TV stars are available to you through the duration of the much-reviled summer season, at the very low price of a home computer attached to that miraculous thing we’ve come to call the Internet.
Seeing as how many of you are indulging in Post Scriptum-ness as we speak, the connections have been well established and you’re ready to enter the realm of summer TV fun.
The Google word is Fiction. Its modus operandi is to maintain an underlying basis for all inventive storytelling on television while being defined by the creative ability of the scribe that claims it. Its power can defy imagination and its existence is resurged to new life through the various minds it filters through. Contrary to popular belief, the summer season is when Fiction runs rampant, wildly weaving its way through the untamed minds of fans who want nothing more than to visit with the characters who’ve left them to fend through the barren season alone.
Our mission is to find this fiction; particularly that which is authored by the fans, capture and indulge in it. Luckily, the Internet provides no shortage of such fan-written stories, showing off sites like Fan-fiction.com that host thousands of fierce adventures, risqué romances and other mind-boggling character developments for the malTVourished summer fan to feed on.
Like many telly-crazies, I found myself poo-pooing fan-fiction, deeming it the obsessive scrawl of those who didn’t have the willpower to wait until a new season of stories began in September. That was of course, until I stumbled upon some very well-written narratives about my beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer that were arguably some of the most well-developed stories I’ve ever read. Maybe that says something about the things I read, or perhaps it speaks of the sea of support fan-writing can provide for a show, filling in the unruly summer breaks with doses of action, while also working to amend the fan-hated misguided story twists TV scribes sometimes torture us with.
Fan-fiction can be just as good as television, and in shadow of the want-have-TiVO-revolution, the stories can be chosen to cater to every yearning fan’s character needs. If you don’t want to read about the everlasting and brutally clichéd love of Dawson and Joey, you can always click over to the complex, yet intriguing attraction that lies between Dawson and Pacey. Never saw the spark? Well some fan did, and I bet if you Googled ‘Dacey Love’ you’d find a whole ‘nother side of that creek.
Often times when TV shows resume in the fall, an event-filled summer has gone by with audiences having been AWOL to the action. Conveniently, nothing of huge substance ever occurs during those months because writers don’t want to have to play the catch-up game through the first few episodes.
Why however, should a fan have to lose out? We spend eight months of the year forming relationships with these characters and then all of a sudden they up and leave? If TV were my boyfriend, I’d kick its ass. And then I’d write about it.
Which is why fan-writers, despite being stigmatized as members of the Geekerdork clan by a vast majority of the ‘normal’ population, continue to wax poetic (literally) about, oh say, Wentworth’s ocean-eyes, while the rest of us can only wish to be woken up when September begins. Instead of channeling their frustration into TV-lit snobbery, they’re doing something constructive with their fandom which is much more rewarding than succumbing to the passive viewing the critics say is robbing the potential-laden lives of TV fans.
This summer, if you find yourselves becoming nostalgic about the good old days spent cracking jokes with Seth Cohen, or vanquishing demons with the Charmed sisters, remember that a good story isn’t much more than a Google away.
Uh, but try not to hold me to that Charmed thing– I can’t conjure up any miracles.
